


Nama, stay

by Fatale (femme)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, au - yoga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 21:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13644687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: He peers into the window curiously at some kind of yoga class and sees the most beautiful man he’s ever laid eyes on. Well over six feet tall, pale skin, legs that go on for miles. He turns around and bends over in what Magnus thinks might be the most obscene pose he’s ever seen.He could stand to get fit, Magnus reasons. He should probably join a gym.---a yoga au.





	Nama, stay

**Author's Note:**

> one of my favorite jokes i've heard:
> 
> what did the yogi master tell his dog?
> 
> "nama, stay."
> 
>  
> 
> I'll see myself out.
> 
> eta: 10/8/18. If you want to read it in Russian: https://ficbook.net/readfic/6977238

 

 

 

He’s on his lunch break picking up the new Balenciaga coat he saw in a magazine last week, when he passes by the new gym that opened on his block. Magnus has never, ever joined a gym in his life, has always seen people on treadmills like rats in a lab, running quickly to get nowhere, and felt immense intellectual superiority.

The gym is certainly luxurious looking, though, and Magnus is deeply attracted to the luxurious and frivolous. The flyer he was handed last week said it boasted a juice bar, yoga, and various martial arts classes.

He peers into the window curiously at some kind of yoga class and sees the most beautiful man he’s ever laid eyes on. Well over six feet tall, pale skin, legs that go on for miles. He turns around and bends over in what Magnus thinks might be the most obscene pose he’s ever seen.

He could stand to get fit, Magnus reasons. He should probably join a gym.

 

\---

 

An absurd amount of money later, clutching a little electronic key fob and temporary membership card that lets him into his fancy new gym, Magnus hurries back to work. He’s going to have to make due with a coffee and sandwich off a cart.

In his office, he sends his assistant out for a whole new workout wardrobe. Flattering cuts only, he specifies.

“You joined a gym?” Clary asks doubtfully. “Do you even know what they do there?”

“I’m in fantastic shape,” Magnus corrects her. “My body is a temple. Carved by gods.”

“I mean, you look fit, but I’ve seen you get winded eating a burrito,” Clary says. “Kind of like the popular girls I used to go to school with -- you know, skinny fat.”

“Okay, please don’t compare me to sorority girls giving it up in the backseat of their mom's Mazda.” He points an accusing finger at her. “But if I was, I would be Queen Bee, let’s be clear.”

“Wait, did you say you want me to buy spandex culottes for you?” Clary asks innocently.

“I will never forgive you for this, Fray,” Magnus vows solemnly.

  
\---

  
“Beginner, intermediate or advanced?” a blond with a dubious haircut and a million shiny white teeth asks him. He has one of those tanks with the stretched out arm-holes, better to see your serratus, my dear.

Despite whatever ugly lies Clary’s been spreading, Magnus is a buff guy in the prime of his life, he can handle advanced yoga no problem. Yoga’s just a bunch of slow stretches, isn’t it? Holding funny poses while you breathe slowly and think about the universe or some shit? He’s played more difficult games of Twister, and he always wins. Always.

“Advanced,” he says confidently.

“You sure, man?” Jace asks, eying Magnus’ purple sweatband doubtfully. Magnus yanks it off his head. Goddamn you, Fray.

“Quite,” Magnus says.

 

\---

 

Alec introduces himself, lets everyone know this is advanced Vinyasa yoga to make sure everyone is in the right class, the dulcet tones Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver sadly warbling in the background. Magnus looks to the right and left, ladies on both sides fit, but certainly not muscular, and can’t help but feel terribly confident.

Twenty minutes in, Magnus revises his opinion, slipping from a runners lunge into High Crescent. He’s red-faced, panting, sweating from places he wasn’t even sure could sweat. His poor chapped undercarriage, he thinks mournfully. It’ll never be the same.

“Align your body,” a soft low voice says behind him, and warm hands tug on his hips, pulling them backward.

“Normally I’m very good at this,” Magnus wheezes. “Maybe I could tell you all about it over coffee.”

Alec shakes his head. “I don’t drink caffeine.”

“Over martinis?” Magnus offers wildly. He thighs tremble, his triceps are on fire.

“No alcohol either,” Alec says.

“Kombucha?” Magnus says with increasing desperation, his arms held aloft over his head. There isn’t a part of his body that doesn’t hurt, why won’t Alec just agree to go out with him so he can give up this humiliating charade? His eyeballs cry out for mercy.

“Not with you,” Alec says, tone frosty, and wanders off to help the woman on the yoga mat next to him.

Well, that settles it. Alec is prickly, unpleasant, has absolutely no business teaching classes full of soccer moms, and hates Magnus with a passion.

Magnus is in lust.

 

\---

 

He manages to make it to the showers where he cries a little as the warm water pours over his seizing muscles. To his great disappointment, Alec is nowhere to be found on his way out.

The cab driver helps heave him out of the backseat once he arrives at his apartment. Magnus thinks he looks like Dirty Harry, a deliberate slow fuck-you walk through the lobby, but it’s probably more like a pained duck waddle.

The problem is, he can no longer put his knees together. It’s like magnets have been inserted into his knees on polar opposites, constantly pushing away from each other as Magnus painfully staggers towards the elevator.

His body may be broken in every way that counts, but not his spirit. Never his spirit. He pictures Alec in his mind: tall and handsome and utterly disdainful of Magnus.

“You will be mine,” he whispers to the Alec in his head. The elderly elevator doorman looks alarmed.

“Are you talking to me, sir?”

“Just take me to the tenth floor, Herbert,” Magnus says evenly.

 

\---

 

Magnus’ spirit is broken. Alec keeps telling him to “lift his spine” but Magnus can’t, just fucking _can’t_. His spine feels like mashed potatoes.

He was unable to get out of bed for two days after his first class, managed to slouch back into work on the third day, and like a fool, a complete and total moron, decided to give yoga another try on the fourth.

“You are a vision of loveliness,” he tells Alec’s crotch, popping his head up from Downward Facing Dog.

Alec leans down, large serious eyes meeting his. “If you worked half as hard at yoga as you do thinking up sleazy come-ons, you’d be a yogi master by now,” Alec tells him.

“But then I’d get laid a lot less,” Magnus says slyly.

Alec frowns and pushes his head back down.

 

\---

 

After the class and Alec’s little fan club of fawning ladies dissipates, Magnus heads up to the front of the class where Alec is changing his playlists. “Masterful class.”

Alec looks up from his iPod. “Mr--”

“Bane,” Magnus says, “but please, call me Magnus.”

“You’re new to the class, aren’t you, Mr. Bane?” Alec says.

“This is my second class here,” Magnus allows. He deliberately makes it sound like he’s taken classes somewhere else. The giant pit stains probably tell a different story, though.

Alec’s mouth twitches. “Well, I’m glad you picked our gym to continue your studies,” Alec says dryly.

“Forgive me if I’m being inappropriate, Alexander--”

“Too late,” Alec says.

“--but I feel like there’s something between us. Sexual tension, maybe?”

Alec sniffs. “I think that’s B.O. Go take a shower, Mr. Bane.”

 

\---

 

Just as he’s stepping out of the shower, Alec walks in, stops dead in his tracks when he sees Magnus. It’s a locker room, no big deal, but Alec looks startled, unhappy. And while part of Magnus would love for Alec to strip down and shower a few feet away from him, he’s obviously gloomy about the prospect. Magnus may be kind of a creep, but he’s not that bad, yet. He takes great pride in all of his sexual conquests being thrilled to be there.

“I’ll be out of your hair in a minute,” he reassures Alec, pulling on his clothes over still-damp skin and wincing. It’s just a terrible feeling, the absolute worst, like having wet hair on a cold day.

Alec looks at him strangely as Magnus brushes past him. “Thanks,” Alec says.

 

\---

  
Friday, a beautiful young woman with long black hair and startling red lips is at the desk talking to weird-haircut-guy, who’s telling her, “You can’t be serious about Simon, Iz. He’s a lousy musician and a pothead. He smells like weed and sadness and gas station snacks.”

Magnus chuckles and walks past, stops short when the woman yells out, “Hey, are you Magnus by any chance?”

“Yes?” Magnus says and peers closer at her. God, he hopes she wasn’t one of his one night stands. He’s been down this grim road before, and it usually ends with a drink in his face.

“I’m Isabelle,” she says, “Alec’s sister.”

“Oh, Alec,” Magnus says and feels his face warm. He pauses. “…wait, has he been talking about me?”

Her smile is enigmatic. “I’ve heard about you is all.” She points towards the guy leaning against the desk. “That’s Jace.”

“Nice to meet you, Jason,” he throws over his shoulder absently. “So, Isabelle, tell me more about your wonderfully flexible brother. Does he follow a diet based in Ayurvedic Principles or is he more a Paleolithic kind of guy? What sort of place should I take him on our first date?”

Magnus has done his research. Which is to say, he sent Clary out to poll the locals on what kind of diet modern yogis prefer, but he’s pretty sure she just took a two-hour lunch break then came back and googled it. He can’t fault her methodology.

Isabelle shoots him a mysterious smile. “Maybe you should find out for yourself.”

 

\---

 

After the class, Magnus heads to the juice bar, orders the Refresh and Revitalize mix with extra wheatgrass, because that seems like the kind of healthy garbage Alec would be into.

He finds Alec in the empty classroom, wiping down his yoga mat.

“Tell me, does Vinyasa yoga improve sexual encounters?” he asks curiously.

Alec back straightens as he turns to look at Magnus. “I suppose that’s up to the individual. I'd have to do some research.”

“I’d be incredibly willing to give you a hand with that.”

Alec closes his eyes, takes a few deep breaths. “Why do you do this?” he asks, sounding tired. His eyes slide open and he peers down at Magnus curiously, eyes searching.

Magnus, thrown off by the abrupt change in conversational direction, is startled into a rare moment of honesty. “I--I don’t know,” he says lamely.

“You’re a good-looking guy, you’re--charming, I guess. You don’t need to sexually harass people to get laid.”

Why, Magnus wonders, is he doing this? While he’s been accused more than once of being smarmy, he is not usually quite this bad. He could just as easily pop into a club, pick up the first attractive person he sees.

Magnus is horrified to realize he _likes_ Alec, likes his prickly manners and careful hands. And like every schoolyard bully that pulls the pigtails of his crush, he can’t help but needle Alec to get attention. It’s kind of depressing.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus says. He remembers the forgotten drink in his hand and thrusts it out towards Alec. “I got you, uh, a drink. Thought you might need it.”

Alec takes the offered beverage and looks down where their fingers brush.

“I should get back to the office,” Magnus says, still feeling off-balance.

“This late?” Alec asks.

“This is early for me,” Magnus says ruefully. It’s true. He’s cut out early to take these classes, and while Magnus had worried he’d fall behind on his briefs, Lydia, his immediate boss, had noticed and congratulated him on getting a life.

“Sounds like you work too hard.”

“The more money I bring into the firm, the more pro bono work I can do,” Magnus explains. He outlines some of his most recent cases, the frustration of fighting a system rigged against the most vulnerable of the population. Without noticing, it’s gone dark outside. Magnus looks down at his watch. “Now I really have to get back,” he says apologetically.

Alec shakes his head, looking dazed. “Of course, don’t let me keep you.”

Magnus picks up his gym bag. “This was fun. I don’t usually get to talk about my cases. No one at the firm’s really interested in hearing about my pro bono work.”

“No one else?” Alec asks, sounding a little sad.

“My life is my work,” Magnus says, heading out the door.

“Sounds lonely,” Alec says from behind him.

 

\---

 

Magnus heads to the gym early, hoping to get another private moment to talk with Alec.

From the desk, Isabelle sees him. “He’s teaching a class,” she says.

“I’ll wait,” Magnus tells her and heads in that direction, where he can see the classes through the walls of glass facing out towards the rest of the gym. Alec is in the first classroom.

Magnus stops dead in his tracks, feels a little like he decided to take an invigorating bath with a hairdryer.

Alec is teaching children’s yoga.

Alexander Lightwood is teaching children’s yoga, and the children are not terrified and crying.

Magnus’ gym bag falls off his shoulder and hits the ground with a thud, but Magnus barely notices. In the private room, Alec is patiently pulling a girl’s shoulders back, explaining how to breathe through the diaphragm while her mom looks fondly on. His hands, large against her small body, are gentle and sure. As Magnus watches, Alec helplessly laughs as the girl dissolves into giggles.

He is lovely, Magnus realizes. Kind and patient and a good person in a way Magnus entirely failed to see before because he was too busy checking out his ass in yoga pants. The class ends shortly after and Magnus watches as Alec rolls up his mat and starts cleaning the room.

“Alexander,” Magnus says softly from the doorway.

Alec looks up, startled. “Magnus?”

He’s nothing like the easy lays Magnus usually brings back to his loft. Magnus has made the mistake of equating an attractive face and hot body with a fucktoy, which is a deeply gross thing to do, and he’s doubtlessly done it a thousand times before. Magnus is a deeply, deeply sucky person, and Alec is way too good for him.

“Nothing, darling,” Magnus says, shaking his head. “I hope you have a great day.” He means it, too.

Alec watches him leave, brow furrowed.

 

\---

 

He’s got three weeks left on his membership and he spends two of them working well into the night and then crashing on the couch with takeout and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reruns.

In the final week, he pulls on his overpriced lululemon and trudges to the gym to cancel his membership so he doesn’t get charged for another month. He could do it over the phone, but he’d like to see Alec one last time.

 

\---

 

When he gets to the gym, he’s surprised to see Alec at the front desk. He thinks he’s seen every employee except Alec there.

“Magnus,” Alec says, a little breathless, which Magnus thinks is odd.

“Never seen you at the desk before,” he observes.

“They say I don’t have the temperament for it,” Alec says with a short laugh.

“That’s true enough,” Magnus agrees.

“Jace and half the staff are out with a cold, and Izzy’s busy teaching a class, so there’s only me.”

“Oh, which class?” Magnus asks absently, gaze wandering. He may have only joined to get laid, but it really is a nice gym. He’s surprised to find that he thinks he’ll miss it.

There’s a hesitation, which catches Magnus’ attention. Magnus looks back at Alec, who is flushing a lovely shade of light pink. “Yoga,” Alec mumbles.

“Pardon?”

“Yoga,” Alec says loudly, rolling his eyes.

“I thought you were the yoga instructor.” There is something Magnus is entirely failing to see, something just out of range of his peripheral vision.

“I was filling in for Izzy while she was out.”

“But she’s been back for weeks,” Magnus points out, still deeply confused.

If possible, Alec gets redder. “I took over for a little longer. I usually teach martial arts. I asked her to switch for a while.”

“But not anymore.”

“No, not anymore,” Alec confirms softly.

“What’s changed?” Magnus asks, but the thing, that huge thing right out of his range, it’s swinging around and smacking him right between the eyes.

Alec shrugs, looks like he would rather be anywhere but here, would rather be hurtling through space and time without a stitch of clothing on, than right here.

“Alexander, you love me!” Magnus crows.

“No,” Alec says, a little severely.

“You like me?” Magnus tries, dismayed.

Alec shrugs helplessly. “I’m really not sure.”

“You can tolerate me?”

Alec grins. “Definitely,” he says. “I think I misjudged you when we first met. Maybe.”

“That makes two of us,” Magnus says. He leans against the counter so that he’s only inches away from Alec. “Let’s go out for some of that vile Kombucha you like so much.”

“I’d rather have coffee,” Alec says.

“You don’t drink caffeine.”

“I lied,” Alec says and leans forward a precious few more inches.

Magnus takes him in up-close, large hazel eyes filling his vision, lips warm and slightly chapped, light stubble uneven and patchy, hair uncombed. He’s a mess, totally unsuited for the front desk, and Magnus is drunk with it, this warm affection suffusing his whole body. “Darling,” he whispers, “you will be mine.”

“Probably,” Alec admits and closes that last inch.

 

\---

  
Alec goes back to teaching the Tai Chi classes and Magnus continues yoga with Isabelle. She’s a much better instructor, anyway, and the added flexibility is really coming in handy with Alec.

They got out for coffee daily, where Magnus watches with mounting terror at the sheer amount of espresso shots Alec demands the barista put into his drink. He thinks Alec has to sign a waiver at some point. No wonder he’s so grouchy -- the caffeine crash alone would floor Magnus for the entirety of the weekend.

Earlier, he texted Alec to let him know he was home and to come over anytime, and while it’s wonderful to spend his free evenings with Alec, he can’t help but imagine what it would be like to come home at the end of a long day to have Alec waiting for him. Magnus had a spare key made last week; he’ll give it to him soon.

Magnus looks up the recipe for a lovely quinoa salad, manages to burn the quinoa, and orders takeout instead. He shouldn’t have bothered; Alec comes in eating a microwave hamburger, a CVS bag slung carelessly over one arm, which Magnus is horrified to see contains 3 more frozen boxed hamburgers. “They were 2 for $2,” Alec says defensively, putting his precious burgers in Magnus’ freezer.

Magnus falls back into a chair, legs giving out from beneath him. “How did I get you so wrong?” Magnus says, lips numb. Alec is frugal to the point of cheap, hopelessly addicted to monstrous amounts of caffeine, kind of an all-around slob.

Alec tosses his jacket onto the floor and steps over a pair of underwear left over from last night. He stuffs the last half of the burger into his mouth because he’s tired of chewing.

Magnus will sit down later and tell Alec all about his day, how he tripped up a co-worker on purpose in an important meeting because they’re both kind of douchebags, and Alec will nod along, agree that the other guy definitely had it coming because Magnus has also learned that Alec is fiercely loyal, forgiving to a fault, and finds Magnus' pettiness endlessly entertaining unless it's directed at himself. He’s far from perfect, but he’s pretty perfect for Magnus.

“You are nothing like I thought you’d be,” Magnus says wonderingly. Every day with Alec is new and surprising and Magnus loves it, loves it all.

“Better or worse?” Alec asks, taking out another burger to microwave it.

“Better,” Magnus says. “Infinitely better.”

 

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: Nama, Stay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474654) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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